Here, then, we have one most suggestive illustration—“suggestive,” I think, is a very useful word—of the funeral habits of ants. Many others could be instanced, but I will end this chapter, and small account of ant doings, generally, with the following extract from the _Proceedings of the Linnæan Society_ (1861). The observer was a Mrs. Hutton, of Sydney; and Romanes, who quotes her account in his _Animal Intelligence_, remarks that though she is not a well-known observer the facts reported were such as scarcely to admit of a mistake. Personally, I attach no weight whatever to anybody’s not being known as an observer. Want of leisure, or unpropitious circumstances generally, must prevent large numbers of people from seeing what they would be very well able to note accurately if they did, or from recording what they do see; whilst, on the other hand, leisure, joined to taste in a certain direction, makes many a quite average observer known as a good one. A good observer, in fact, is rather one who is always keeping on, and does not weary, than one who can see a single salient thing more plainly than most other people; and, again, it is easy to set a fictitious value merely on being before the public. Having thus defended Mrs. Hutton, I proceed now to quote her account: “I saw,” she says, “a large number of ants surrounding the dead ones” (soldier ants which she had herself killed and left lying on the ground some half-hour previously), “and determined to watch their proceedings closely. I followed four or five that started off from the rest towards a hillock a short distance off, in which was an ants’ nest. This they entered, and in about five minutes they reappeared, followed by others. All fell into rank, walking regularly and slowly, two by two, until they arrived at the spot where lay the dead bodies of the soldier ants. In a few minutes two of the ants advanced and took up the dead body of one of their comrades; then two others, and so on, until all were ready to march. First walked two ants bearing a body, then two without a burden; then two others with another dead ant, and so on, until the line was extended to about forty pairs, and the procession now moved slowly onwards, followed by an irregular body of about two hundred ants. Occasionally the two laden ants stopped, and laying down the dead one, it was taken up by the two walking unburdened behind them, and thus, by occasionally relieving each other, they arrived at a sandy spot near the sea. The body of ants now commenced digging with their jaws a number of holes in the ground, into each of which a dead ant was laid, where they now laboured on until they had filled up the graves. This did not quite finish the remarkable circumstances attending this funeral of the ants. Some six or seven individuals had attempted to run off without performing their share of the task of digging; these were caught and brought back, when they were at once attacked by the body of ants and